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Indian UPS Market Set for Explosive Growth

As strong as India is relatively in the IT sector, it is unfortunately weak in the national infrastructure to support its computing demands; from roads to energy, India challenges firms who open shops on its soil. This creates a big market for uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs), backup power that keeps computers running during the country’s frequent outages and often cleans up the fluctuating power coming into the building.

According to analysts Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert), India’s UPS market is set to expand from $528.5 million in 2011 to $828.2 million by 2018, recently reported Computer Reseller News (CRN).

Projects that were deferred during the economic downturn are now getting the green light, noted Frost & Sullivan, partially explaining the growth projections.

“UPS and power solutions are finding application in telecom, manufacturing, BFSI, mining and marine,” noted Jayabalan Velayudhan, director, strategy & business development, IT Business India, APC by Schneider Electric (News - Alert), in the article. He also said that an increase in broadband penetration in lesser Indian cities “and the computerization initiatives in various government departments will also be a key.”

Additionally, hosting and application service providers are expected to be one of the greatest drivers of UPS growth.

“Large DCs will fulfill the growing needs of consumers looking for cloud services,” Velayudhan said. “Such installations will need high efficiency, compact and scalable solutions such as modular or rotary UPS systems in order to decrease costs and space, and enable future expansion.”

Furthermore, about 40 to 45 percent of the Indian DC cost comes from UPS, according to Haresh Gada, director of Mumbai’s Network Techlab.

The small- to medium-sized business (SMB) market also will be clamoring for more UPS solutions, with something close to 90 percent currently not using servers of any kind. The CRN article cited a study showing that 78 percent of SMBs said they planned to add hosted servers in the next three years.

Due to poor infrastructure, the UPS market in India is positioning itself as an end-to-end power solution for Indian companies. Vendors are consolidating their offerings and including DC management software, KVM, infrastructure management appliances and power distribution units in a single package.

Green UPS solutions are popular, also because of infrastructure challenges; efficiency is particularly prized in power-starved India.

“Customers are adopting green UPS technology which offers higher efficiency of up to 90-92 percent against the normal 80-88 percent,” said Ankesh Kumar in the CRN piece, director, channel products & marketing for Emerson (News - Alert) Network Power. Up to 30 percent of customers are opting for green solutions.

“High efficiency is achieved through double conversion topology,” explained Jaya Shetty, director at Grid Power Conversion. “Green UPS not only requires less power but also enhances cooling power thereby reducing air-conditioning requirements and extending the life of UPS components and batteries. A transformer-less design adds to the green concept.”

Solar, modular and rack-mounted UPS solutions also are finding favor, but UPS vendors must fight off a host of offerings from China and Taiwan as they serve the Indian market.

“In our estimate there are more than 500 brands of entry-level UPS systems currently available in India,” explained Velayudhan. “However, over time, the partners have understood the flaws and pains associated with Chinese and Taiwanese boxes in areas such as service and product quality. Now they are not very keen to support these short-lived vendors and put their reputation at stake in the market.”

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Once a telecommunications system has been installed and the service is turned on, the challenge for network operators is keeping the system running with minimal downtime, in order to avoid the main source of customer dissatisfaction.